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僕の彼女はサイボーグ （映画）
As I said, I have a quest to take advantage of my free afternoons while I have them. Friday is even better because right now I pretty much only have two classes all day, at 6pm and 8pm. Technically I have a 9pm, with two students in it, but the woman in the class hasn't shown up since March due to work/social schedules, and the man in the class hasn't been there since early May, AND I just found out he's transferring to GEOS Sapporo-Odori! He called today to say "I can't come to class today, please tell Deanna I'm sorry, and ALSO, I am moving back to Hokkaido, so can you guys transfer me to a GEOS in Sapporo city?" This guy used to be my advisor about All Things Hokkaido, he gave me suggestions before my Sapporo Golden Week trip, gossipped with me about the Fighters and about Consadole Sapporo (soccer team), and is just an all-around nice guy. I'm gonna miss him. Maybe I can get him to send me some of the special Hokkaido-only Fighters goods ;)
Anyway, so I went up to Saitama Shintoshin, got a turkey-on-rye sandwich at Kua'aina (doesn't sound like a big deal to you guys, but in Japan this is quite a rarity), and then went to the movie theater to see Boku no Kanojo wa Cyborg ("My Girlfriend is a Cyborg"), starring Ayase Haruka as a cyborg, and Koide Keisuke as the clueless pathetic college student who follows her around and falls in love with her. (The best way I could think to describe his character is: he plays a Ninomiya Kazunari role even better than Nino does it himself. I mean, he starts off the movie buying himself a birthday present, and getting it gift-wrapped. The audience is basically thinking, "Yeah, this is EXACTLY the kind of guy who would want a robot girlfriend.")
I'm not really sure whether this movie was a sci-fi flick, a romance, a comedy, or some combination of all three. I mean, you have a robot girl sent back in time (hence sci-fi), who the main character falls in love with (hence romance), but naturally she acts very strange and does bizarre wacky things due to being a robot, plus supernatural strength and supermodel beauty combined with typical Japanese men leads to lots of scenes of would-be flirts finding themselves flying into walls or otherwise maimed (hence comedy).
There are a lot of very funny, very charming scenes that show the bizarre but substantial chemistry between the two leads, and I think they did a pretty good job of doing it, but not overdoing it. Oddly, she does everything you'd expect a robot girlfriend to do EXCEPT the sex (apparently, she explains that she's perfectly capable of it, but any time he tries anything, she maims him). This includes cleaning his apartment, helping him with his college classes, carrying him piggyback when he's too exhausted to walk, and uh, eating everything in sight, including his pet lizard. No, really. ("This is delicious nabe! What did you make it of? *sees lizard head in pot* *faints*")
The only problem is, this movie is supposed to be a weird post-apocalyptic tale of neverending robot love, or something like that, so naturally there has to be a big tragedy and a big fallout, because Japanese movies just don't like to have happy endings. Koide's character is told early on -- through a projection message of himself in the future -- that she was sent back to protect him. From what, it's not entirely clear... until THE BIG TOKYO EARTHQUAKE happens, and then we spend like half an hour of movie on things falling over and getting destroyed and him nearly getting killed about ten times while she keeps saving him from things with her superhuman strength and ability to have big rocks and boards and whatever fall on her, and her ability to lift and throw a bus. I suppose those ARE the kinds of qualities that make a good girlfriend. Anyway, finally she gets crushed by a building and even splits herself in two to save him from a final chasm and then REALLY gets killed. Or something. But he survives, and then we see him in the future again... where he's some sort of robot master and essentially has an entire staff of cyborg girls who look exactly like her.
Then there's about 15 minutes at the end of the movie where I have no clue why they bothered going into a weird flashback, aside from that you see a bunch of the first part of the movie from HER perspective instead of from HIS. But for me this didn't really work as being any different. Maybe it's that I still don't believe she really could fall in love with him. Or maybe, as I've said before, it's because I think Ayase Haruka secretly IS a freaking robot.
After the movie I came back to GEOS, arriving a little after 4pm. Great timing, really. I prepared some stuff and then my 6pm kid student showed up around 5:30pm. She's one of the kid students who doesn't suck. We played ping-pong and catch in the lobby before class for like 15 minutes, which surprised Kanae, I think she thinks I hate kids, heh. Which is not true. I just hate obnoxious kids who make my life difficult. This girl is about 9 years old and actually manages to remember a lot of English words and she always says the target sentences really well, plus she seems to actually LIKE the games I come up with, or at least, when she loses, she always says "Noooo, again" and makes me play again until she wins. When playing catch/ping-pong she even imitates me in English when accidentallying hitting/throwing the ball into somewhere annoying to get ("Sorry! Sorry! I got it!") In past weeks I've even had her reading very short books (like "Big Bear, Little Bear", and part of "Fox in Socks" when we had the X phonics card come up). She makes me feel like I am ACTUALLY teaching her something! Anyway, I got to play that boardgame I made last week, because I ran out of stuff to do and figured it'd be a good review. She caught on really quickly and even made me play it twice too after I won the first game. So that's a success.
Hmm.
I wonder if I should start a separate blog for reviewing Japanese movies I've seen. It does seem like I have gone to an awful lot (I average 2-3 per month, so I've probably seen around 20 since coming here?). Next one I want to see is The Magic Hour, followed by the Hana Yori Dango live-action movie (!!!), then not sure what. Jun-Kissa Isobe looked interesting, and eventually that 100-Yen Girl one that I forget exactly. Maybe Climber's High just because it has Sakai Masato in it. We'll see, I guess. The neat thing is, if I go on Wednesday afternoons, movies only cost 1000 yen for "ladies day". Today, there was some Movix Special day so it was only 1000 yen as well. A nice alternative to only doing the late shows.
Anyway, so I went up to Saitama Shintoshin, got a turkey-on-rye sandwich at Kua'aina (doesn't sound like a big deal to you guys, but in Japan this is quite a rarity), and then went to the movie theater to see Boku no Kanojo wa Cyborg ("My Girlfriend is a Cyborg"), starring Ayase Haruka as a cyborg, and Koide Keisuke as the clueless pathetic college student who follows her around and falls in love with her. (The best way I could think to describe his character is: he plays a Ninomiya Kazunari role even better than Nino does it himself. I mean, he starts off the movie buying himself a birthday present, and getting it gift-wrapped. The audience is basically thinking, "Yeah, this is EXACTLY the kind of guy who would want a robot girlfriend.")
I'm not really sure whether this movie was a sci-fi flick, a romance, a comedy, or some combination of all three. I mean, you have a robot girl sent back in time (hence sci-fi), who the main character falls in love with (hence romance), but naturally she acts very strange and does bizarre wacky things due to being a robot, plus supernatural strength and supermodel beauty combined with typical Japanese men leads to lots of scenes of would-be flirts finding themselves flying into walls or otherwise maimed (hence comedy).
There are a lot of very funny, very charming scenes that show the bizarre but substantial chemistry between the two leads, and I think they did a pretty good job of doing it, but not overdoing it. Oddly, she does everything you'd expect a robot girlfriend to do EXCEPT the sex (apparently, she explains that she's perfectly capable of it, but any time he tries anything, she maims him). This includes cleaning his apartment, helping him with his college classes, carrying him piggyback when he's too exhausted to walk, and uh, eating everything in sight, including his pet lizard. No, really. ("This is delicious nabe! What did you make it of? *sees lizard head in pot* *faints*")
The only problem is, this movie is supposed to be a weird post-apocalyptic tale of neverending robot love, or something like that, so naturally there has to be a big tragedy and a big fallout, because Japanese movies just don't like to have happy endings. Koide's character is told early on -- through a projection message of himself in the future -- that she was sent back to protect him. From what, it's not entirely clear... until THE BIG TOKYO EARTHQUAKE happens, and then we spend like half an hour of movie on things falling over and getting destroyed and him nearly getting killed about ten times while she keeps saving him from things with her superhuman strength and ability to have big rocks and boards and whatever fall on her, and her ability to lift and throw a bus. I suppose those ARE the kinds of qualities that make a good girlfriend. Anyway, finally she gets crushed by a building and even splits herself in two to save him from a final chasm and then REALLY gets killed. Or something. But he survives, and then we see him in the future again... where he's some sort of robot master and essentially has an entire staff of cyborg girls who look exactly like her.
Then there's about 15 minutes at the end of the movie where I have no clue why they bothered going into a weird flashback, aside from that you see a bunch of the first part of the movie from HER perspective instead of from HIS. But for me this didn't really work as being any different. Maybe it's that I still don't believe she really could fall in love with him. Or maybe, as I've said before, it's because I think Ayase Haruka secretly IS a freaking robot.
After the movie I came back to GEOS, arriving a little after 4pm. Great timing, really. I prepared some stuff and then my 6pm kid student showed up around 5:30pm. She's one of the kid students who doesn't suck. We played ping-pong and catch in the lobby before class for like 15 minutes, which surprised Kanae, I think she thinks I hate kids, heh. Which is not true. I just hate obnoxious kids who make my life difficult. This girl is about 9 years old and actually manages to remember a lot of English words and she always says the target sentences really well, plus she seems to actually LIKE the games I come up with, or at least, when she loses, she always says "Noooo, again" and makes me play again until she wins. When playing catch/ping-pong she even imitates me in English when accidentallying hitting/throwing the ball into somewhere annoying to get ("Sorry! Sorry! I got it!") In past weeks I've even had her reading very short books (like "Big Bear, Little Bear", and part of "Fox in Socks" when we had the X phonics card come up). She makes me feel like I am ACTUALLY teaching her something! Anyway, I got to play that boardgame I made last week, because I ran out of stuff to do and figured it'd be a good review. She caught on really quickly and even made me play it twice too after I won the first game. So that's a success.
Hmm.
I wonder if I should start a separate blog for reviewing Japanese movies I've seen. It does seem like I have gone to an awful lot (I average 2-3 per month, so I've probably seen around 20 since coming here?). Next one I want to see is The Magic Hour, followed by the Hana Yori Dango live-action movie (!!!), then not sure what. Jun-Kissa Isobe looked interesting, and eventually that 100-Yen Girl one that I forget exactly. Maybe Climber's High just because it has Sakai Masato in it. We'll see, I guess. The neat thing is, if I go on Wednesday afternoons, movies only cost 1000 yen for "ladies day". Today, there was some Movix Special day so it was only 1000 yen as well. A nice alternative to only doing the late shows.
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o_O ... hahahahahahahaha
That movie sounds like fun.
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